Brainstorming: Rhetorical Modes

The rhetorical modes are nine ways of presenting and structuring information.  These are useful for providing new information about a topic without repeating yourself.

For your Academic Analysis, you need to explore the significance of photography for society and/or individuals.

As such, you should begin with the rhetorical mode of Argument, which entails constructing a thesis statement that you would support with reasons and evidence.  For this essay, you should choose the topic (such as photography and time, photography and identity, photography and reality/authenticity), and then construct a thesis statement that presents an argument about that topic.  To support your thesis statement, you will provide reasons and explanations, and then you'll use evidence (the photographs you choose) as illustrations of your claim.

The other rhetorical modes will help you in your exploration.

Use Definition to specify and explain important ideas when you want to focus on essential elements/components of the idea.

Use Description when you want to focus on sensory details (sights, sounds, textures, tastes, smells) or use figurative language (metaphors and similes) to bring an idea or object to life.

Use Narration when you want to use a story to help explain an idea.

Use Exemplification when you want to use examples to explain an idea.

Use Compare and Contrast when you want to explore the similarities and differences between two or more objects or ideas.

Use Cause and Effect when you want to explore causal relationships between objects or ideas.

Use Division and Classification when you want to break an idea into separate categories or types.  For example, you could break the concept of "Music" into the genres of rock, classical, rap, and so on.

Use Process Analysis when you want to explore how something can be done (or how it was done in the past or should be done in the future); this mode emphasizes order and a progression of steps.

For this post, you have four tasks:

1.  Write your thesis statement for this essay.
2.  List the other rhetorical modes besides Argument that you plan to use.
3.  List the photograph from a fellow classmate you plan to use as evidence in your essay.
4.  List the photograph from the Getty Exhibit that you plan to use as evidence in your essay (click on the photographer's names to see the different photographs).

Post #4: Using Quotes

One hallmark of advanced writing is the effectiveness with which one uses another person's words and ideas.  There are three ways to accomplish this: summary, paraphrase, and direct quote.  To summarize or paraphrase means to keep the author's ideas but to reconstruct them in your own language, syntax, and voice (while giving attribution to the original author, of course).  To directly quote a source is to keep the author's ideas and words (if the language is vivid enough to be worth keeping).  However, when using a direct quote, writers should avoid free-standing quotes (also known as dropped, floating, or cut-and-pasted quotes).  A free-standing quote is a quote that a writer uses without introduction or integration, and it will disrupt the writer's own tone and flow.

There are three ways of introducing quotes to prevent them from being free-standing.

1.  Use a simple introductory phrase, like "According to" or "So-and-so argues."  This method emphasizes the author, so a writer would use this when he or she wants to emphasize the person as an expert or someone offering testimony.

Here's an example.

According to Siegfried Kracauer, "While time is not part of the photograph like the smile or the chignon, the photograph itself, so it seems to them, is a representation of time" (424).

2.  Write your own sentence, then use a quote (introduced with a colon) that functions as evidence or demonstration of your sentence's ideas.  Be sure your sentence is a complete sentence; otherwise, the sentence becomes a fragment.  This method works most effectively for using source material as evidence for the writer's own claims.

Here's an example.

In certain ways, a photograph functions as a more reliable witness than our own memory: "Memory encompasses neither the entire spatial appearance nor the entire temporal course of an event. Compared to photography memory's records are full of gaps" (Kracauer 425).

3.  Instead of introducing the entire quote, integrate pieces (words, phrases, or clauses) into the context of the writer's own syntax.  This method works best to synthesize ideas and to create a smooth flow.

Here's an example.

When we reduce our experience of the world to collecting photographs, we become guilty of the "warehousing of nature" (Kracauer 435) and loved ones in dusty albums as forgotten souvenirs.

Your assignment:

A. Read either (your choice) Roland Barthes’s “Rhetoric of the Image” or Andre Bazin’s “The Ontology of the Photographic Image.”

B.  Find three interesting quotes.

C.  Introduce those three quotes using the above methods.

The Image World

For this entry, read Susan Sontag's "The Image World" (the first attachment on Blackboard under the "Academic Analysis" tab).

Then, apply her idea of photography's powers of acquisition and control to your analysis of one photograph from our blog.  In your analysis (which should be a paragraph of 4-10 sentences), use one quote from Sontag's essay.

Your Photographs

E. Tobias's "Family Spring Break, 2015"

J. Leon's "The Art of Food"

C. Hernandez's "Fluffy, Jr., 2015"

C. Bidwell's "Vacation Exhaustion"

J. Phangrath's "Vans Off the Wall"

M. Tobias's "Summer in Hawaii"

S. Momi's "Joy Caught Off-Guard"

C. Dawson's "Electric Feel"

S. Ice's "My Parents Hate Me"

M. Martinez's "Jar of Expressions"

T. Stewart's "Best Christmas Gift EVER"

L. Hutton's "San Diego Safari Surprise"

M. Woodman's "Stranger Things Have Happened"

S. Jackson's "Nails"

C. Blunt's "Ooh, Aah"

A Patel's "The Broken Light"

N. Solorio's "Basket of Sunshine"

A. Solorio's "Infinite Blue"

C. Marcos's "Happiest Girl in the World"

C. Juban's "Disneyland, 2014"

O. Mohammadi's "Watchdogs"

S. Adamson's "Santa Cruz Island"

V. Peralta's "Flamingos, San Diego Zoo, 2015"

J. Maltos's "Down in the Valley"

R. Cha's "Babies!"

J. Thompson's "Life's a Beach"

J. Torres's "Gettysburg Museum"

K. Barrios's "Las cataratas de Guatemala" or "Guatemalan Waterfalls" 

Post #2

For this entry, read Siegfried Kracauer’s “Photography," post one quote (with page number), and explain why you found that quote meaningful.